Problem: The client is trying to delete images from their multilingual WordPress site to free up space. They have deleted images from the English media library, but the images remain in the media libraries of other languages. The client is unsure if they need to delete the images from the FTP server or if each image gets duplicated for each language. Solution: We recommend enabling the option in WPML > Settings to 'delete translations when deleting a post'. This setting ensures that when you delete an image from the default language, it also deletes the entries in other languages, effectively removing the file completely from the server. Images are not duplicated across languages; there is only one file with multiple database entries for different languages. If this option was not enabled when you initially deleted the images, you would need to manually delete them from the other language libraries. For future deletions, having this setting enabled will streamline the process by removing images from all languages simultaneously.
Please note that this solution might be outdated or not applicable to your specific case. We highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. If the issue persists, please open a new support ticket at WPML support forum for further assistance.
